Uganda

Crops

Uganda's main food crops have been plantains, cassava,
sweet
potatoes, millet, sorghum, corn, beans, and groundnuts.
Major
cash crops have been coffee, cotton, tea, and tobacco,
although
in the 1980s many farmers sold food crops to meet
short-term
expenses. The production of cotton, tea, and tobacco
virtually
collapsed during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the
late
1980s, the government was attempting to encourage
diversification
in commercial agriculture that would lead to a variety of
nontraditional exports. The Uganda Development Bank and
several
other institutions supplied credit to local farmers,
although
small farmers also received credit directly from the
government
through agricultural cooperatives. For most small farmers,
the
main source of short-term credit was the policy of
allowing
farmers to delay payments for seeds and other agricultural
inputs
provided by cooperatives.

Cooperatives also handled most marketing activity,
although
marketing boards and private companies sometimes dealt
directly
with producers. Many farmers complained that cooperatives
did not
pay for produce until long after it had been sold. The
generally
low producer prices set by the government and the problem
of
delayed payments for produce prompted many farmers to sell
produce at higher prices on illegal markets in neighboring
countries. During most of the 1980s, the government
steadily
raised producer prices for export crops in order to
maintain some
incentive for farmers to deal with government purchasing
agents,
but these incentives failed to prevent widespread
smuggling.